Stakeholder risk research tools in the light of companies’ sustainable development

Abstract

Despite very extensive research on the issues of the stakeholder approach, so far there is no general understanding of the risks borne by company’s stakeholders and no applied tools developed to address specific problems of recognising and analysing them. The paper aims to study stakeholder risks, evaluate them, model stakeholder risk networks, develop tools for determining the loyalty (satisfaction) of stakeholders, and establish risk priorities for stakeholders. The research methodology rests on the stakeholder approach, corporate governance theory and graph theory. The paper applies comparative and content analysis, methods of modeling, prioritisation and visualisation of graphs. Based on Rebecca Yang’s method modified by the authors, the study models stakeholder risk networks. Due to the modification, the method is able to take into account the factor of balance of stakeholders’ interests. The method is tested on a business project of a particular company. The research results include specifying the mutual influence of risks in the network, determining key categories of risks and the most influential stakeholders, rating risks using analysis metrics and graphs, and developing a scheme for implementing the proposed tools in the management system. The theoretical and practical significance of the study lies in introducing the factor of balance (imbalance) of interests in modelling of stakeholder risk networks, as well as in providing recommendations on the use of these tools for sustainable development.